Servando Mier Garcia

I have been an International Inbound Freight Manager at Jaguar Land Rover since 2014. My job involves two responsibilities: Firstly, the development of the inbound logistics strategy for all the future manufacturing facilities outside the UK. Secondly, managing the current Inbound Freight operations to export vehicle parts from the UK and Europe to Brazil, India and China.

Previously I had the opportunity to be part of a team that designed the tools that help Amazon (the most successful and fastest growing Inbound supply chains in the UK and probably the world) and before coming to the University of Leeds in 2011 I was also part of one of the giants in retail’s logistics operations, Wal-Mart Mexico, where I had the opportunity to grow from a shift manager in a Cross Dock operation to a Replenishment Manager for the Fruits and Vegetable business.

Someone once told me, if you cannot win the war, join the opponent and that is what I have done, I have joined the best automotive OEM in the UK to try to find the best solutions on transport sustainability from the inside.

My experience at ITS has helped me blend into the corporate culture of Jaguar Land Rover seeking Environmental Innovation. I enjoy looking beyond the standard transportation networks using trucks and warehouses. My job gives me the opportunity to find those synergies that will help us reach the maximum usage of multi-modal means of transportation where we can increase rail usage, short sea shipping and ultimately by implementing 3D printing, drone deliveries and making better use of analytics, modelling, and visualization to reduce the need for transportation of parts.

These are exciting times because I have to make sure that the efforts made on the electrification of our vehicles do not bring additional emissions and hazards when transporting the batteries and related technologies.

I took the decision to study in the ITS mainly due to the green logistics project which I read about in 2010. This opened my eyes into a new possible career within the logistics and supply chain arena that the world is heading towards. Later on, having the opportunity to have one of the project coordinators, Dr. Antony Whiteing as my dissertation supervisor was an honour.

Studying Sustainability in the ITS was “delicious”. You get to see and understand the importance of that big pie which is the environmental sustainability, you get to know all the true concepts and metrics that can help you identify the sweet smell of governments, companies and people that are truly committed with sustainability or the rotten smell of public relations campaigns. You can taste the layers of the deep dive analysis of human transport behaviour that only experts such as Frances Hodgson can provide.

I had fun writing my dissertation due to the broad range of opportunities the ITS gave me. I was able to attend classes from various faculties such as Geography, Environment and Transport to prove some hypothesis on the location of retail facilities and the impact on car usage were actually true.

My advice to students interested in this course would be to do not underestimate the employability power of a Masters Degree that combines transportation and the environment versus other Masters such as Transport Planning or Economics. The real asset of this Masters does not come from a technical skill you can use as soon as you come out from school but from a leadership capability to visualize and shape how the world of transportation should look like if the right balance between economic and environmental sustainability is kept.